Trickster
It is Paul Radin which returned celebrates the Trickster, (literally “joker”), small mythical character present in all the cultures. Trickster is for example the equivalent of the Lutin in the culture of the Indians of Americas. The trickster, “rascal divine”, fact of the rotten tricks, has a ceaseless disordered activity, an overflowing sexuality, etc, it is according to Paul Radin (1956) a mirror of the spirit, a “ speculum lied ”. What gave place thanks to its Co-work with Carl Gustav Jung to the development of the concept of interior Enfant, but also of a psychotherapeutic practice.
Characteristics of Trickster
Paul Skinflint, joint author of the work “the myth of the written Rascal”: He is hardly of as widespread myth in the whole world as that which one knows under the name of " myth of Fripon" we will occupy ourselves here. There are few myths of which we can affirm with as much insurance than they belong to the oldest modes of expression of humanity; few of other myths preserved their original contents in an so unchanged way. (...) It is manifest that we are here in the presence of a figure and of a topic, or various topics, endowed with a particular and durable charm and who exert a not very ordinary attraction force on humanity since the beginnings of the civilization.
It is about a rough being and crafty one, full with innocence and covetousness, which enfreint all the rules, makes all awkwardnesses, starts all the catastrophes and fall into all the traps, including those which he tightened itself. The course of the trickster is that of a training by the absurdity, to some extent.
Like Till mischievous the, character of malicious travelling acrobat and joker of the popular literature of the North of Germany. (Its name with the shape Till Eulenspiegel in German). This name is at the origin of the mischievous adjective: it was borrowed in French as of XVIe century in the form Till Ulespiegle which gave place to a whole literature.
It can pass part of its existence in animal form, or the character can be broken up into several roles of which some are held by animals like the Crow, the Fox, in America the Coyote, etc…, which are not without making think of a collection French medieval accounts of XIIe and XIIIe centuries having for hero of the animals acting like the human ones: the Romance of Renart.
The trickster is to tell the truth so various, so polymorphic that it is sometimes difficult to preserve a real individuality to him.
Unexpected prolongations
It is at the end of this training that it will become an human being, which it was not, or not always, at the beginning. And this last concept is important because it evokes an evolution, a passage to the state of adult, that of man or mature woman.
What precisely Carl Gustav Jung also discovered in its concept of Individuation.
This work around Trickster made it possible Carl Gustav Jung to develop the concept of interior Enfant, (divine child or divine rascal), while thus contributing its share to the study of the psychology of the rascal.
That had also an unexpected development a priori , that of the concept of interior Enfant (analytical psychotherapy of inspiration), used in psychotherapy for adult. I.e. when a man or a woman arrived so that one names the second part of the life decides to undertake a way of personal Développement.
Prospect for psychopathology
In its most obvious demonstrations, the image of the trickster is a faithful representation of the most total lack of differentiation of psyché human, hardly left the animal stage.
In psychopathology, the image of the trickster appears in psyché of the dissociated personality inside which a collective personification of features better or worse is activated than it me.
At the normal man, the figure of the trickster is represented by unconscious against-tendencies appearing each time the man feels at the thank you of apparently malevolent incidents; this character trait is the shade; it is explained that the myth of the trickster was preserved and developed for its therapeutic effect: in order to point out its past to him, the intellectual and moral level primitive lower is maintained vis-a-vis the conscience of the individual more developed.
The trickster is compared with the individual shade: they have both a common goal, the research of the direction. Although the shade appears negative, certain of its features or associations can sometimes indicate a positive resolution of the conflict.
Bibliograpic references
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Skinflint The Trickster: With Study in Native American Mythology , 1956 ISBN 978-0805203516
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Carl Gustav Jung, " The divine Rascal: an Indian myth " , work collective with Skinflint and Kerényi, editions Bookstore of the University, Georg and Co, 1958.
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